"MILD AUTISM CAN GIVE YOU A GENIUS LIKE EINSTEN. IF YOU GOT RID OF ALL THE AUTISM GENETICS, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE SCIENCE OR ART" - TEMPLE GRANDIN

Can Autism Be Cured?

Currently, there are no dramatic treatments to cure autism. However, this does not mean that nothing can be done for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This page is primarily for parents of newly diagnosed children, but is applicable to anyone who wants to know about autism and whether autism can be cured.

ASD cannot be cured. Autism in children leads to their brains being wired differently, and different does not mean disabled. Also, unlike a telephone switchboard, the wiring cannot be altered to suit our requirements and convenience. The consensus among autism advocates is that it doesn’t need to be cured. Instead, the difference should be celebrated. There are effective ways to treat an autistic child by educating not only the child but parents and guides also**. There are many tested and effective therapies that can help an autistic child or individual tap into his strengths, build on his abilities, and carve out a place for himself in society.

An autistic child can lead a more fulfilling life once the co-occurring conditions and core deficits of autism are addressed. Mentioned below are some co-occurring conditions and core deficits of autism. Once these conditions are addressed, the child shows good progress and his/her prognosis for navigating the world improves substantially:

Autism!

Motivation

Autistic children lack mastery motivation. They possess little (if any) motivation for new challenges. They prefer situations of high predictability over those with greater potential growth and development. Uncertainty causes restlessness among autistic children and individuals, and they substitute accumulation of information for wisdom and sophisticated analysis.

Perceptual Organization

For individuals on the autism spectrum, conducting an ongoing appraisal process to determine which information is most important is difficult. They do not understand that environments present many potential opportunities to organize, relate and prioritize information in different ways. They do not distinguish peripheral, minor changes from more central, major changes in their environment. They do not effectively distinguish the crucial information in a problem from information of less or little importance. However, all this can be corrected largely through effective training programs .

Interpersonal Competence

Children with autism need years of effective training and therapy to overcome interpersonal difficulties. These difficulties include the inability to perceive, or understand and monitor thousands of co-regulatory actions required to maintain relationships. They also get overwhelmed by the work required to maintain various states of emotional coordination with others, or when the emotional states are no longer aligned. They are unable to carry on productive collaborations, or integrate their ideas with others. They cannot grasp other people’s intentions and motives for doing what they do. Parents and guides play a critical role in helping children with autism overcome these difficulties.

Thinking & Problem-Solving

Even those autistic individuals with high I.Q.s have little understanding of flexible, innovative thinking and problem-solving. They are unable to formulate new strategies when prior strategies do not work. Improvising when the exact resources are not at hand is difficult for them. They do not engage in hypothetical and speculative thinking. They do not understand how to formulate relative, “good enough” and “best-fit” solutions that fit the larger context and are based on the highly specific needs and competing demands of real-life problems.

Communication

Difficulty in communication is another core deficit of autism spectrum disorder. Individuals do not understand that human beings communicate primarily to share their subjective experiences with one another. Human communication is conducted in a “single broadband packet” containing multiple channels that together form the message. However, these individuals do not process language content, prosody, facial expression, gesture and context as a single communication packet, which makes communication a difficult (and sometimes overwhelming) task for them.

Hindsight & Foresight

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder possess excellent procedural memory. However, they lack Autobiographical Memory, which means that they find it difficult to extract subjective meaning from an event. They do not use either their past experience or potential future experience in a productive manner, unless they are trained to do so with autism training programs. They do not engage in productive reflection, or build up a store of personal memories related to perseverance and resilience. Their minds do not permit the use of past achievements and successes to motivate them during periods of frustration. Nor do the individuals engage in productively examining potential future scenarios in order to prepare for future uncertainty.

Self Awareness

Autistic individuals need training to develop a coherent sense of personal identity. They do not engage in effective self evaluation and analysis. They do not know that they can examine the personal impact of potential decisions. They do not understand the need to constantly monitor their own subjective state and fail to use productive self regulation strategies to achieve greater emotional awareness and control.

All these core deficits can be overcome with proper training for the individuals and support from parents and guides. We specialize in providing this training.